Vanity mirrors come in a wide variety of sizes and shapes. Some such mirrors mount to walls, while others can be hand-held or are supported upon pedestals or other support structures, including standing up on the floor. Single mirrors, regardless of their size, only allow for one side of a person to be viewed, the front side. Curved mirrors provide a distorted image of the person. Thus, a typical solution for allowing a person to view multiple sides of the person, such as for inspecting clothing, styling hair, or other related purposes requires a multiple mirror assembly.
Most common multiple mirror assemblies involve vertical mirrors mounted with a center mirror and at least one side wing mirror angled relative to the center mirror, but also in a vertical plane. Such multiple mirrors allow for front and sides of an individual to be viewed. Another common prior art technique is to utilize a fixed large vanity mirror along with a small hand-held mirror. Either the hand-held mirror is located facing an area to be viewed or the large fixed mirror is used for viewing a desired location by orienting the desired location of the individual facing the fixed mirror, and then utilizing a hand-held mirror opposite the fixed mirror and facing the user's eyes, so that the reflection from the area to be viewed, against the fixed mirror, and then against the hand-held mirror and then to the eyes of the individual can be utilized for such viewing.
While the combination hand-held mirror and fixed mirror strategy is somewhat effective, it has multiple drawbacks. The hand-held mirror must be held by the user, so that one hand of the user is not available for other functions, such as hairstyling procedures. Furthermore, the hand-held mirror is either quite small, undesirably heavy or unsteady, so that an area being viewed is limited in size or the user has energy taxed unacceptably.
Some rooms are provided with mirrors on opposite walls. However, because these walls are perfectly parallel to each other, and an individual is always exactly between lines perpendicular between these mirrors and eyes of the user, the user's head is always in the way, blocking viewing of a backside of the individual's head. Rather, what is needed is two mirrors which are almost parallel, but slightly off of parallel, so that a person can “see around” the person's head. Rooms do not conveniently come with opposing walls which are slightly off parallel. Furthermore, it is desirable to have some adjustment control in the positioning of mirrors, both to provide optimal spacing away from the individual, and to provide optimal angling of the mirrors, such as for viewing left rear and right rear sides of the head of the individual. Fixed opposing mirrors are not able to accommodate such control.
Some hinged mirrors have sufficient numbers of panels and sizes of reflective panels that they can have multiple panels spaced on nearly opposite sides of an individual. However, the hinged panels block passage of the individual on at least one side thereof, due to the intervening hinge panel between the two panels which can be positioned generally opposite each other. Thus, while many different mirror assemblies are found in the prior art, these prior art assemblies have various drawbacks which benefit from a mirror assembly avoiding these deficiencies.
Many bathroom locations in modern residential structures, hotels, dressing rooms and similar locations are provided with a sink located within a countertop and with a mirror on a wall on the side of the sink and countertop opposite where an individual can easily stand (or sit). Such rooms typically have only limited space available for mounting of mirrors and mirror assemblies. One area that is generally available is on a wall on a lateral side of such a sink countertop and perpendicular to the main wall behind the sink and behind the countertop. However, the primary area in front of such a lateral wall space cannot be easily accessed by an individual because the countertop is there. An ideal place for an individual to stand is in front of the countertop, but typically the lateral wall stops short of this area. Accordingly, a need exists for a multiple mirror assembly which can pivot and articulate to desirably position mirrors on opposing sides of such a space, but which mirrors can be collapsed back into a stored location against such a lateral wall space when not in use.
Other problems with known prior art mirror assemblies include difficulty in holding the mirrors in desirable positions and the limited availability of mirrors for viewing a top of an individual's head, and concave close-up mirrors within such mirror assemblies. An ideal mirror assembly would provide support for such accessories to further allow for customization and usefulness of such a mirror assembly, and all without taking up any counter space, drawer space or hands of a user to position the mirrors where desired and hold the mirrors in this position.